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The Civic Engagement Movement and the Democratization of the Academy Matthew Hartley and Ira Harkavy � The past two and a half decades have seen the emergence of myriad efforts aimed at reclaiming the civic purposes of American colleges and universities (Harkavy and Hartley 2008; Hartley and Hollander 2005). The sheer scope of these efforts—championed by dozens of associations and through the establishment of many new networks—has led some observers to liken them to a movement (Hollander and Hartley 2000; Kezar, Chambers, and Burkhardt 2005). Like a social movement, the civic engagement movement has relied on the talents and energies of many committed people to fulfill its aims. Of particular relevance to this volume is the integral role that students have played by supporting the growth and institutionalization of civic engagement efforts at colleges and universities across this country. For example, students played a key and often leading role in developing community service programs in the 1980s on hundreds of campuses. Servicelearning initiatives throughout the 1990s could not have grown as dramatically without the enthusiastic involvement and support of students. In this chapter we argue that, for the movement to fulfill its original purpose of strengthening communities and democracy, additional approaches need to be available for students to play a leadership role and optimally benefit from civic engagement activities. These approaches need to be part of the core work of the academy (learning and developing new knowledge to improve society) and challenge traditional norms about students as passive learners, the community as a laboratory and passive recipient of assistance, and the faculty member as expert. The entire civic engagement movement grew out of widespread discontent with the status quo, including the then-dominant role of the academy in society. In the early years, the range of factors contributing to this sense of collective unease included a faltering economy and the prevalence of societal critiques about the fragmentation of American society (Putnam 1995). Critics often directed invective against higher education (A. Bloom 1987; Smith 1990; Sykes 1989). Even friendly 68 leadership and civic engagement critics voiced concerns. In an interview in 1986, Ernest Boyer, then the President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, summarized the prevailing mood on campuses that he had visited when researching his book on the undergraduate experience (Boyer 1987): “We didn’t find dramatic examples of failure; rather, we found a loss of vision, of vitality, a sense of marking time” (Marchese 1986, p. 10). This discontent set the stage for a dramatic and important shift in the predominant practices of the academy. Active pedagogies that linked community-based activities with disciplinary learning (service-learning) began to gain ground, along with conceptions of scholarship that were contextually driven and involved collaboration with university colleagues and with members of the community. Such efforts have changed the academy for the better. They have democratized it. To appreciate the magnitude of the shift, it is instructive to recall the nature of the discourse two decades ago. In 1986, for example, more than one hundred college and university presidents met to establish a new association. Originally called the Coalition of College Presidents for Civic Responsibility, the group’s name soon changed to Campus Compact. A comment from one president at that meeting, which was recorded and transcribed, is particularly illustrative: “I’d like to ask a question—and this is probably dangerous—how many in the room either give or think it would be alright to give some form of academic credit for service? [Some hands go up.] How many would be opposed? [Some hands go up.] And the rest are just in the middle waiting for leadership. It looks like a real minority” (Coalition of College Presidents for Civic Responsibility 1986). In 1991, the first survey of Campus Compact members (at that time there were 235) found that only 16 percent of their students were involved in service efforts of any kind—volunteer or curricular; only 15 percent of Compact institutions had or were considering establishing (which means they did not yet have) offices to support this work; 59 percent of the presidents characterized the extent of their faculty’s involvement in this work as “little” or “not at all.” By contrast, the most recent survey of Campus Compact members in 2007 (approximately 1,100 members ) found: A third of all students participate in service and service-learning courses • annually Eighty percent of member institutions have an office or center coordinating • service-learning and/or civic...

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